EditorialSelected papers presented at the 'International Workshop on Cellular Materials' (LWo.C.Mat) in Turin (Italy) in 2011: Editorial comments

摘要

Many materials have a cellular structure, cork, wood, sponge and trabecular bone are natural cellular solids, while engineered honeycombs and foams are now made from polymers, metals, ceramics and glasses. Materials containing tailored porosity exhibit unique properties and features. Therefore, porous materials find nowadays many applications as end products in several technological processes. Contrary to metallic and polymeric porous structures, pores have been traditionally avoided in ceramic components because of their intrinsic brittle nature. However, in the last decades, an increasing number of applications that require porous ceramics have appeared, especially for environments where high temperatures, extensive wear and corrosive media are involved. Such applications include molten metals filtration, high-temperature thermal insulation, supports for catalytic reactions, filtration of particulates from diesel engine exhaust gases, and of hot corrosive gases in various industrial processes. The advantages of using porous ceramics in these applications are usually the high melting point, tailored electronic properties, high corrosion, and wear resistance in combination with low thermal mass, low thermal conductivity, controlled permeability, high surface area, low density, high specific strength, and low dielectric constant. Porous ceramics are also increasingly used as scaffolds for bone replacement. In this case, the ceramic phase is a calcium phosphate ceramic of a bio-glass, and the porosity is a key factor to trigger bone ingrowth. The common feature of all porous ceramics is that properties can be tuned for each specific application during processing route and these aspects are now rather well in mind to people that have to face these problems. Therefore, the goal of this special issue of the Journal of the European Ceramic Society is to present some of the latest developments related to porous ceramic materials.